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By admin, March 14, 2010 9:01 pm

The iPhone is known for having a temperamental battery life span, often ranging from multiple days of power to less than a transcontinental flight.  The reason for much of this inconsistency is that the iPhone essentially goes to sleep when it is not being used. When it is being used you can go from basic functions to those that eat up battery life like a terminal cancer. If you are trying to maintain battery life there are several standard suggestions that people tend to follow. Reduce screen brightness, turn off EQ, 3G, and Wi-Fi, turn off Push features, and shorten the speed of the Auto-Lock feature. Beyond the obvious there are a few things to think about and tips to follow if you want to really extend the life of your iPhone battery.

The first tip to follow is to simply reduce the use of your iPhone.  This may seem obvious, but people often forget that the iPhone is a phone first and iPod second. Listening to music on your iPhone will eat up the battery, but watching videos either online or in the iPod section will kill it faster than anything else. If you absolutely need your battery life to remain consistent you are going to have to go to the basic functions of your phone and only use it for calls.

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By admin, March 12, 2010 9:26 pm

1. Battery Memory – When I first got my new cellphone, my friend recommended to fully drain the battery before recharging it. His reasoning was connected to the idea of battery memory. Allowing the battery to fully discharge then recharging to max, supposedly gives you the complete battery capacity. Otherwise, if you simply charged from the half way point to max battery capacity, the battery would treat the half way point as the empty point, thus cutting your battery capacity in half.

The good news is today’s lithium batteries have a safety circuit in place to insure the battery doesn’t reach the point of no return. The safety circuit isn’t fool proof though, if you leave your battery completely drained for a few days, even the circuit’s protective measures won’t save it.

2. Battery Calibration – There are some benefits to fully discharging your lithium battery periodically, for laptops this can be especially important. If you start to notice your battery meter becoming more and more inaccurate, it may be time for some battery calibration. Allow your lithium battery completely drain, then charge until the battery is full again. This will calibrate your battery  giving you more accurate readings. This should be done once every 30 charges or when you notice battery readings are off.

3. Consequences of Heat – Another enemy of lithium battery life is heat. If you were to leave your laptop plugged in and running for a year, you should expect the lithium battery capacity to be anywhere between 60% to 80% of it’s original max capacity. This is why people that use their laptops as desktop replacements will notice greatly reduced battery life performance after one year of use. This issue can be resolved by removing the battery while using a corded power source. Now you may want to check with your manufacturer ahead of time to check for safety concerns, some manufacturers have mentioned problems such as moisture and dust collecting in the battery casing.

4. Battery Storage – If you don’t plan on using your lithium battery for prolonged periods of time, then you’ll want to reduce the charge level to 40% and place the battery in the fridge (not freezer). Storing the battery at 100% charge level applies unnecessary stress and can cause internal corrosion. On the other hand, if the charge is too low, the battery can become permanently unusable, due to battery self discharge. This is why manufacturers recommend storing your lithium batteries at 40% charge, rather than either extreme.

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By admin, March 11, 2010 8:59 pm

10. Auto-Lock Sooner

You can set your iPhone to automatically go to sleep – also known as Auto-Lock – after a certain amount of time. The sooner it sleeps, the less power is used to run the screen or other services. Try setting Auto-Lock to 1 or 2 minutes.

Find it in Settings -> General -> Auto-Lock

11. Do Less Battery-Intensive Things

Not all ways to save battery life involve settings. Some of them involve the way you use the phone. Things that require the phone be on for long periods of time, or use a lot of system resources, suck the most battery. These things include movies, games, and browsing the web. If you need to conserve battery, limit your use of battery-intensive apps.

12. Sleep and Wake Less

Constantly putting your phone to sleep and waking it up will drain battery life. Of course these functions are common parts of using the phone, but you can also be judicious in your turning on and off of the phone and save battery life at the same time.

13. Buy an Extended Life Battery

If all else fails, just get more battery. A few accessory makers offer extended life batteries for the iPhone. If you need so much battery life that none of these tips help you enough, an extended life battery is your best bet. With one, you’ll get days more standby time and many hours more use.

14. Turn off Vibrate in Games

Playing a game with vibrate happening frequently is an unnecessary battery suck. If you can turn it off, turn it off.

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By admin, March 10, 2010 9:18 pm

6. Keep WiFi Off

The other kind of high-speed network that the iPhone can connect to is WiFi. WiFi is even faster than 3G, though it’s only available where there’s a hotspot, not virtually everywhere like 3G. Keeping WiFi turned on at all times in hopes that an open hotspot will appear is a sure way to drain your battery life. So, unless you’re using WiFi right this second, keep it turned off.

Find it in Settings -> WiFi

7. Turn Off Location Services

One of the coolest features of the iPhone 3G is its built-in GPS. This allows your phone to know where you are and give your exact driving directions, give that information to apps that help you find restaurants, and more. But, like any service that sends data over a network, it needs battery to work. If you’re not using Location Services, and don’t plan to right away, turn them off and save some power.

Find it in Settings -> General

8. Turn Data Push Off

The iPhone 3G can be set to automatically suck email and other data down to it or, for some kinds of accounts, have the data pushed out to it whenever new data becomes available. You’re probably realized by now that accessing wireless networks costs you battery life, so turning push off will extend your battery’s life. With push off, you’ll need to set your email to check periodically or do it manually

Find it in Settings -> Fetch New Data

9. Fetch Email Less Often

The less your phone needs to access a network, the less battery is used. So, set your phone to check your email accounts less often. Try checking every hour or, if you’re really serious about saving battery, manually. Manual checks means you’ll never just have email waiting for you on your phone, but you’ll also stave off the red battery icon.

Find it in Settings -> Fetch New Data

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By admin, March 9, 2010 9:10 pm

1. Turn on Auto-Brightness

The iPhone has an ambient light sensor that adjusts the brightness of the screen based on the light around it. Turn this feature on and you’ll save battery because your screen will need to use less power in bright places.

Find it in Settings -> Brightness

2. Use programs with 3D less often.

Not surprisingly, I’ve noticed that when I play games rendering 3D, battery life drops. Using the graphics chips more intensely will crank up power usage, but maybe the drain is also because of the nature of gaming

3. Reduce Screen Brightness

Users can control the default brightness of the screen. Needless to say, the brighter the default setting for the screen, the more battery it requires. Keep the screen dimmer to conserve more of your battery.

Find it in Settings -> Brightness

4. Turn Bluetooth Off

Bluetooth wireless networking is especially useful for cell phone users with wireless headsets or earpieces. But transmitting data wireless takes battery and leaving Bluetooth on to accept incoming data at all times requires even more juice. Turn off Bluetooth except when you’re using it to squeeze more juice from your battery.

Find it in Settings -> General

5. Turn Off 3G

The iPhone 3G and later models operate on two cellular networks, EDGE and the faster 3G. Not surprisingly, using 3G requires more battery life to get the quicker speeds and higher-quality calls. It’s tough to go slower, but if you need more battery, turn off 3G and just use EDGE. Your battery will last longer (though you’ll need it when you’re downloading websites more slowly!).

Find it in Settings -> General -> Network